It is known to equip a vehicle with an imager assembly that captures images of a field-of-view proximate to the vehicle. If the imager assembly is located within the passenger compartment and is ‘looking’ through a window (e.g. windshield) of the vehicle to capture images of an area around the vehicle, fogging of the window may undesirable degrade the clarity of the images. Such in-vehicle imager assemblies are typically equipped with a glare shield to reduce glare at the portion of the window that intersects the field-of-view of the imager assembly. However, the glare shield may undesirably block airflow output by the vehicle heating and ventilation system from impinging on the portion of the window that intersects the field-of-view of the imager assembly.
It has been proposed to apply resistive heater elements to the portion of the window that intersects the field-of-view of the imager assembly. However, this has been observed to undesirably degrade the clarity of the images captured by the imager assembly. It has also been proposed to dry-nitrogen purge the volume enclosed by the glare shield. However, this solution undesirably increased expense, and may be prone to leakage that could lead to window fogging.